I don’t know about you, but I often dread using a new web service. There you are right in the middle of doing something and you don’t know what to do and you get stuck and need help. You can even have this problem with a service you have been using for years -wanting to delete your profile and not finding a way to do so is a good example.
What is the normal method for providing help? Well, it’s usually about providing a Manual [in PDF format], a Help file or an FAQ.
With trepidation and foreboding you leave what you were doing and click the link. After a delay, up pops the requisite text (Can I ever get back to where I was? Where was I?) and the challenge begins!
The usual first step is to enter the name of what you are looking for in a search box. When this fails, as it often does, you start reading the appropriate chapters and often find that what you need is not covered! C’est la vie!
There just has to be a better way than this!
Of course, if a service is SO simple then you can probably ignore providing any sort of help at all – or so a developer might think! Help, along with many other things, are often left to the end of the development phase and it often turns into an ill thought-out after-thought. However users, no matter how experienced, will always need help from time to time so the provision of help should be at the forefront of a developer’s mind from day one.
As a point of principle, we believe that help needs to be provided at the specific place it is needed. Help needs to be point focussed on the activity that a user is attempting to undertake. A user shouldn’t be taken away from their current activity. But how can this be achieved without adding bloat on the web page?
There are a tremendous number of opinions on this subject that fill web servers around the world. One of the best repositories for perspective and an in-depth discussion on web site usability issues is Jakob Nielsen’s Website. We recommend a visit to his site and his newsletter wholeheartedly.
We wanted to provide focused in-context help on trymehere and to that end we decided to use pop-up windows. Now there is a subject to discussm, but we won’t here! It used to be a sore problem due to unethical usage of such a feature, but this is largely a thing of the past. Many major sites use pop-ups in a wholly productive way.
The benefit for trymehere is that it is possible to click on a small 9 x 9 pixel graphic that looks like this 
.
We use it in page headings to describe a page’s function:
We use it after terms that are unfamiliar to a new user, e.g.
We place it next to data entry fields to explain what you should enter ands in what format:
When you click the button, a small window pops up that provided detailed help. Two examples are:
Yes, we even provide help about the Help button!
Notice that we even use help buttons within a help screen so that you can spend as much time clicking around in the nested help environment as you wish! To make this less boring, we have placed a small picture on each screen :> 
There is one down side to taking this approach! I have just counted the number of individual help screens and it totals over 300! Phew! No wonder we have seemed to have spent 24 hours a day editing them! If we’ve rewritten one once, we’ve rewritten it twenty of times! Maybe this has taken more time that developing the service?
Still, we think the effort was well worth while. Mind you, between you and I, I’d rather be on a beach on Barbados…
Chris
